Happiness in Magazines

Blur guitarist Graham Coxon’s previous solo albums had largely been an exercise in venting his alt-rock fury outside of the day-job. Two years after being ejected from Blur, however, his fifth found him knuckling down and producing a set of songs that delivered precisely the sort of scruffy power pop that his estranged bandmates, and an increasingly Gorillaz-focused Damon Albarn, had largely abandoned. Spiky opener “Spectacular” and The Skids-indebted “Freakin’ Out” both could have been shoo-ins for Blur singles, while “Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery” was essentially his own “Coffee & TV” Mk.2.